tomber à l’eau
\tɔ̃.be a l‿o\
The verdict
“tomber à l’eau” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - N’être plus envisagé, être abandonné, être annulé.
Corpus desk
Index FR-tomber-a-l-eau · tomber à l’eau · French
tomber à l’eau · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tomber à l’eau |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \tɔ̃.be a l‿o\ |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « tomber à l’eau » en français
Rare enough to double-check
tomber à l’eau is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \tɔ̃.be a l‿o\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "N’être plus envisagé, être abandonné, être annulé.".
Zero misspellings are on record for tomber à l’eau in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is tomber à l’eau, spelled T-O-M-B-E-R- -À- -L-’-E-A-U.
Definition
- 1N’être plus envisagé, être abandonné, être annulé.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tomber à l’eau appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
L'affaire est tombée à l'eau. L'affaire est finie.
— Euh… une chance dans votre malheur, monsieur de Mesmaeker: les contrats ne sont pas tombés à l’eau!… — SI!
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.